The U.S. State Department spotlighted the Taliban’s treatment of women in a report released over the weekend.

The fundamentalist Islamic faction has ruled Afghanistan since 1996. Officials claim that thousands of women have been living in poverty since then.

“As many as 50,000 women, who had lost husbands and other male relatives during Afghanistan’s long civil war, had no source of income,” the report stated. “Many were reduced to selling all of their possessions and begging in the streets, or worse, to feed their families.”

The State Department also said that the Taliban conducted a “war on women.”

“The Taliban perpetrated egregious acts of violence against women, including rape, abduction, and forced marriage,” the report alleged. “Some families resorted to sending their daughters to Pakistan or Iran to protect them.”

Girls over the age of eight are not allowed to attend school. Women’s enrollment in Kabul University was prohibited. The U.S. government claims that by denying education, the Taliban have made sure that women will not be able to advance themselves.

“As a result of these measures, the Taliban was ensuring that women would continue to sink deeper into poverty and deprivation, thereby guaranteeing that tomorrow’s women would have none of the skills needed to function in a modern society,” the report stated.

The report included statements from Afghan women and Taliban officials.

“The Taliban has clamped down on knowledge and ignorance is ruling instead,” Sadriqa, a 22-year-old woman from Kabul said.

Taliban Minister of Education Syed Ghaisuddin is quoted as saying why he thinks women should be confined in the home.

“It’s like having a flower, or a rose. You water it and keep it at home for yourself, to look at it and smell it,” Ghaisuddin said. “It [a woman] is not supposed to be taken out of the house to be smelled.”

The United States is keenly interested in the role of women in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to State Department officials.

“The United States government, which has been the largest individual national donor to Afghan humanitarian assistance efforts, believes the Taliban’s oppression of women must come to an end,” the report stated. “The U.S. government supports a broad-based government representative of all the Afghan people and which includes women in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

“Only Afghans can determine the future government of their country,” the report continued. “And Afghan women should have the opportunity to play a role in that future.”

“Because of the Taliban, Afghanistan has become a jail for women. We haven’t got any human rights,” Faranos Nazir, 34-year-old woman in Kabul said. “We haven’t the right to go outside, to go to work, to look after our children.”

But while the Taliban retains power in some areas of Afghanistan, women will still be repressed, the report asserts.

“Islam is a religion that respects women and humanity,” the report stated. “The Taliban respects neither.”

On the Net: The State Department: http://www.state.gov